Adsorptive mode of Phenol abatement from aqueous solution using activated carbons

Fresh water crisis has been emerged as one of the most acute issues in the current global scenario, forcing the waste water reutilization concept a must. The reutilization of waste water again demands proper yet effective treatment. Among organic contaminants of waste water phenolic compounds are the principal components, which due to its toxic and carcinogenic nature forces people for its removal from waste water. Adsorption being the highly efficient, simple, cost effectiveness and the availability of a wide range of adsorbents is used as one of the most indispensable method for treatment of phenolic waste water. In the present study, two different types of activated carbons were used as adsorbents namely, commercial granular activated carbon and laboratory prepared water hyacinth activated carbon prepared from roots of water hyacinth by chemical activation method with phosphoric acid impregnation. For batch adsorption process, operating variables studied were adsorbent dose, contact time, pH, initial phenol concentration, and temperature respectively. Sorption experiments indicated that the sorption capacity was dependent on operating variables and the process was strongly pH dependent. Adsorption of phenol onto GAC witnessed following optimal values of different operating variables as, w=3g/L, t=360mins, pH=9 and highest uptake capacity of 39.0056 mg/g and those for phenol-WHAC system are 5g/L, 360 mins, 6 and 28.0049mg/g respectively. In both the cases adsorption capacity was shown to be decreasing with increase in temperature. Kinetic measurements showed that the process was uniform and rapid. In order to investigate the mechanism of sorption, kinetic data were modelled using the pseudo-first-order and pseudo-second-order kinetic equations. Among the kinetic models studied, the pseudo-second-order equation was the best applicable model to describe the adsorption process of phenol onto both the adsorbents. Equilibrium isotherm data were analyzed using the Langmuir, Freundlich isotherms. The Langmuir model yields a much better fit than the Freundlich model for phenol adsorption onto GAC, in contrast Freundlich model was better fitted for WHAC. Isotherm parameters have also been used to obtain the thermodynamic parameters such as free energy, enthalpy, and entropy of sorption. The value of ΔH° was found negative, supporting that the phenol adsorption by the GAC and WHAC are exothermic in nature

Hypomagnesemia in critically ill patients and its association with morbidity and mortality

BACK GROUND: Despite the well recognised importance of magnesium, its most common under diagnosed electrolyte abnormality in current medical practice even though hypomagnesemia is found in 7-11% of general hospital admission, its incidence is too high in critically ill patients ranging from 20-65% in different studies. This study was carried out in critically ill patients admitted under institute of internal medicine, in IMCU of RGGGH, Madras Medical College, Chennai apex tertiary care centre in Tamil Nadu. AIMS AND OBJECTIVE: To study the prevalence of magnesium deficiency in critically ill patients and its correlation with need and duration of mechanical ventilation, ICU stay, APACHEII and mortality. STUDY DESIGN: It was a prospective observational study. SUBJECT: A total of 50 critically ill patient admitted to ICU of RGGGH, Chennai under institute of internal medicine fulfilling inclusion and exclusion criteria. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Serum magnesium level along with other relevant investigation were sent with in first 24 hours of hospital admission. The hospital detail and progress of patients followed till end points. Statistical analysis done using SPSS version 16.0 microsoft window. RESULT: On admission 32 out of 50 ie 64% had hypomagnesemia when compared with other arm of patients with normo and hypermagnesemia increased ventilatory support 60% vs 40% p value .047, increased APACHE II SCORE 19.22 vs 18.56 with p value 0.0303..In these study duration of stay, ionotropic support as end point has no significant correlation. CONCLUSION: This study shows a higher prevalence of hypomagnesemia in critically ill patients. Hypomagnesemia was associated with higher APACHE II score on admission, need of ventilatory support

Study on Information Needs and Seeking Behavior of the Health Science Researchers in an Indian Tertiary Health Care Institution

The interest of health science researchers depend upon their moral and professional requirements to seek the information as the libraries are services oriented departments. The exponential growth of knowledge cause abundant of documents in various forms such as print and non-print materials and others that is, electronic information resources. The demand for specialized information by the users has necessitated the library to repackage the information from various sources to suit the user’s needs. The health science information seekers accept evidence based context and problem based learning is a part of information needs and they prefer their friends and colleagues as the most relevant sources to seek information, but print texts are more preferred than different database by the law students. The health science researchers fulfill their primary information needs through internet sources to enhance research activity. The e-resources are easy to save and copy and consume less time to access the required information. Understanding the relation between information needs and technology based information service can provide meaningful result to address the information seeker’s unmet health information. Further studies can expand the findings of this current study to better understand their barriers to health information

Graphene Based Nanocomposite Electrodes for Energy Storage in Supercapacitors

There is an unmet need to develop high performance energy storage systems (ESS), capable of storing energy from both renewable and non-renewable sources to meet the current energy crisis and depletion of non-renewable sources. Amongst many available ESS, supercapacitors (ECs) are the most promising because they exhibit a high charge/discharge rate and power density, along with a long cycle life. A novel use of atomically thin carbon allotropes like graphene, carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and electrically conducting polymers (ECPs) such as polypyrrole (PPy) have been studied as high performance conducting electrodes in supercapacitor application. A novel templated sustainable nanocomposite electrode has been fabricated using cellulose extracted from Cladophora c. aegagropila algae as a component of the assembled supercapacitor device which later has been transitioned to a unique template-less freestanding nanocomposite supercapacitor electrode[1]. The specific capacitance of polypyrrole-graphene-cellulose nanocomposite as calculated from the cyclic voltammetry curve is 91.5 F g-1 at the scan rate 50 m Vs-1 in the presence of 1M NaCl electrolyte. The open circuit voltage of the device with polypyrrole -graphene-cellulose electrode was found to be around 225 m V and that of the polypyrrole -cellulose device is only 53 m V without the presence of graphene in the nanocomposite electrode. Understanding the fundamentals by fabricating template nanocomposite electrode led to developing a unique nanocomposite template-less freestanding film which comprises of polypyrrole-graphene-CNT hybrid[2]. Various experiments have been performed using different electrolytes such ascorbic acid, sodium sulfate and sulfuric acid in different scan rates. The specific capacitance of polypyrrole-graphene-CNT nanocomposite with 0.1 wt% of graphene-CNT, as calculated from cyclic voltammetry curve is 450 F g-1 at the scan rate 5 m V s-1. For the first time a nanofibrous membrane has been developed as a separator which acts as an electrolyte reservoir and ionic diffusion membrane. The performance of the fabricated supercapacitor device has been analyzed using a multimeter and compared with a conventional alkaline (1.5 V) battery. Lighting up of 2.2 V light emitting diode has been demonstrated using the fabricated supercapacitor

Temporally Aligning Long Audio Interviews with Questions: A Case Study in Multimodal Data Integration

The problem of audio-to-text alignment has seen significant amount of research using complete supervision during training. However, this is typically not in the context of long audio recordings wherein the text being queried does not appear verbatim within the audio file. This work is a collaboration with a non-governmental organization called CARE India that collects long audio health surveys from young mothers residing in rural parts of Bihar, India. Given a question drawn from a questionnaire that is used to guide these surveys, we aim to locate where the question is asked within a long audio recording. This is of great value to African and Asian organizations that would otherwise have to painstakingly go through long and noisy audio recordings to locate questions (and answers) of interest. Our proposed framework, INDENT, uses a cross-attention-based model and prior information on the temporal ordering of sentences to learn speech embeddings that capture the semantics of the underlying spoken text. These learnt embeddings are used to retrieve the corresponding audio segment based on text queries at inference time. We empirically demonstrate the significant effectiveness (improvement in R-avg of about 3%) of our model over those obtained using text-based heuristics. We also show how noisy ASR, generated using state-of-the-art ASR models for Indian languages, yields better results when used in place of speech. INDENT, trained only on Hindi data is able to cater to all languages supported by the (semantically) shared text space. We illustrate this empirically on 11 Indic languages.Comment: Work Accepted in IJCAI-23- AI and Social Good Trac

Mechanical Properties, Translucency, And Low Temperature Degradation (LTD) Of Yttria (3–6 Mol%) Stabilized Zirconia

The mechanical properties (hardness and biaxial flexural strength), optical properties (translucency and gloss), and low temperature degradation (LTD) of 3–6 mol% yttria stabilized zirconia have been investigated. The specimens were prepared by conventional solid-state sintering at 1400 °C. The mechanical and optical properties were evaluated for sintered and polished specimens. X-ray diffractometer (XRD) and scanning electron microscope (SEM) were used, respectively, for structural and microstructural investigation. LTD was determined by XRD analysis of the samples aged in a hydrothermal autoclave at 134 °C for 5–108 h. The mechanical and optical properties are found to be microstructure sensitive. The LTD, due to tetragonal to monoclinic phase transformation, decreases with increasing Y2O3 content. The mechanical strength, translucency, and LTD are the lowest for 6 mol% Y2O3 stabilized zirconia

Application of Mobile Technology in the Libraries: A Way Forward in Library Services During Covid-19 Pandemic

This paper discusses the present scenario of mobile communication technology and its future aspects in libraries. Discussed the use of the application of mobile technology by the Libraries in the Covid period and its use in accessing library resources and services through Mobile applications. Mobile SMS Reference Services, Library Marketing are also discussed along with the special services on mobile for disabilities and the advantages of mobile technology in libraries

Fabrication and Experimental Analysis of Axially Oriented Nanofibers

A novel design of a laboratory built axially rotating collector (ARC) having capability to align electrospun nanofibers have been described. A detailed morphological comparison of such nanofibers orientation and their geometry is done using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). For comparison various polymeric solutions were electrospun on conventional static collector as well as ARC. The average diameter of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) nanofibers was found to be 250 nm while polycaprolactone (PCL) nanofibers were found to be within a range of 600–800 nm. Conducting nanoparticles such as graphene and multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) mixed with polymer solutions shown to have a significant influence on the overall geometry of these nanofibers and their diameter distribution. It is evident from the SEM analysis that both graphene and MWNTs in polymer solution play a crucial role in achieving a uniform diameter of nanofibers. Lastly, the formation of the aligned nanofibers using ARC has been mathematically modeled and the electromagnetic field governing the process has been simulated

Study on indoor thermal comfort in the residential buildings of Liege, Belgium

A detailed study on the building stock of Liege urban area (Belgium) has been conducted during 2011-2012. The study is focused on historic buildings, which were constructed before 1945 and represents a very significant share (68.33%) of Liege building stock. In the Walloon region, the average heating energy consumption per year of the building stock is 408 kWh/m2 and the average heating energy consumption per year stands at 340 kWh/m2 for Liege. Hence, it is important to study existing buildings to improve the energy efficiency as well as thermal comfort standards. It is also important to understand the behaviour of these buildings and the preferred indoor thermal environment of the occupants. Keeping this in mind, the indoor thermal environment has been monitored for ten residential buildings followed by detailed interaction with the occupants to record their preference and expectations about indoor thermal comfort. It was found from the analysis that the fluctuations in the temperature of living room and bedroom with respect to outdoor conditions are a function of occupant’s age, type of heating system and fuel used. It is also found that the average energy expenditure was very high in these buildings. The study further identifies specific areas that need to be taken into consideration in order to improve the thermal comfort and energy efficiency. It put forth the argument that to improve the energy efficiency of occupied houses, occupant’s preference and expectations on thermal comfort needs to be considered for designing sustainable solutions towards improving energy efficiency

An analysis on energy efficiency initiatives in the building stock of Liege, Belgium

Built environment is responsible for 60% of total energy consumption in European countries and 128 million BOE of primary energy in Belgium. The average energy consumption in the residential buildings of Belgium is 70% higher than the EU average and stands at 348 kWh/m2/year. Energy Performance Building Directive (EPBD) provides guidelines for energy performance analysis of buildings in Belgium. In this study, a holistic approach has been adopted to analyse the building stock of Liege, Belgium. This analysis is based on ‘General Socio-economic survey 2001’ and ‘Housing quality survey 2006 in Walloon region’databases. It considers parameters such as buildings age, built-up area, type of heating system, type of fuel used, adjacency, insulation of roofs and walls and energy consumption etc. for an in depth analysis. This study concludes that about 69% of buildings which are constructed before 1945 needs serious renovation towards the improvement of roof and external wall insulation level. It then successfully identifies specific areas which need detailed study to evaluate the comfort status in the existing building stock, improvement of insulation level and its effect on heating energy consumption as well as the economic analysis on energy efficiency measurements